Arse-Wiper to the Stars!
This afternoon I told myself I’d write for real, but instead here I am writing—well, to you, Mr. Imaginary Henshaw .
Two years ago I had a sneaking suspicion that’s now expanded into something somewhere between full-grown theory and full-blown superstition. You let me know which.

At that time, I had a collection of crappy jobs: I worked at a coffee-shop, at a gift-shop, as a runner at a local amphitheater (for which I got to drive around listening to the Shins a lot while going out to buy pancake make-up for Art Garfunkel. No joke. Tell ya later.) I freelanced and wrote clever little things here in this forum and in letters and essays to friends and family-members. I also wrote a few short fiction things. (Closer to the truth: short “fiction” things.) I also did lots of arts and crafts, went to see lots of shows of all sizes and shapes. (Shaking fist:)I had my finger on the pulse of Atlanta, dammit! No: I had my finger on my own creative pulse. The things I wrote were livelier, funnier and more thoughtful. Now that I have a job that’s Official, I feel almost as if my stethoscope to the world has a puncture in it somewhere. I get home; I want to sleep; I want to watch Six Feet Under.

Maybe it’s because I was so eager to define myself outside those jobs that I was such a creative superstar. Hell knows (heaven, too) I wasn’t happy in other ways. God, I was freaking miserable.

So the lingering fear of course, is that I have to be off wiping elephants' arses for a living somewhere so I can go home and write snarky things about those damn elephants who think their arses are so fancy-schmance. And it’s not that I have some great dislike for my job; I just don’t want to let it fricking define me. Or maybe I want a job that defines me, but this ain’t it. I don’t know. I keep plugging away. The answer? As my cousin M.J. would joke, “Speed.”